Sitewide Banner Image

Welcome friends! We are open for your literary needs!

Indigenous studies

"All the Real Indians Died Off": And 20 Other Myths About Native Americans (Myths Made in America)

"All the Real Indians Died Off": And 20 Other Myths About Native Americans (Myths Made in America)

$16.00
More Info
Unpacks the twenty-one most common myths and misconceptions about Native Americans

In this enlightening book, scholars and activists Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker tackle a wide range of myths about Native American culture and history that have misinformed generations. Tracing how these ideas evolved, and drawing from history, the authors disrupt long-held and enduring myths such as:

"Columbus Discovered America"
"Thanksgiving Proves the Indians Welcomed Pilgrims"
"Indians Were Savage and Warlike"
"Europeans Brought Civilization to Backward Indians"
"The United States Did Not Have a Policy of Genocide"
"Sports Mascots Honor Native Americans"
"Most Indians Are on Government Welfare"
"Indian Casinos Make Them All Rich"
"Indians Are Naturally Predisposed to Alcohol"

Each chapter deftly shows how these myths are rooted in the fears and prejudice of European settlers and in the larger political agendas of a settler state aimed at acquiring Indigenous land and tied to narratives of erasure and disappearance. Accessibly written and revelatory, "All the Real Indians Died Off" challenges readers to rethink what they have been taught about Native Americans and history.

500 Years of Indigenous Resistance Comic Book: Revised and Expanded

500 Years of Indigenous Resistance Comic Book: Revised and Expanded

$19.95
More Info
When it was first published in 2010, The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book was heralded as a groundbreaking illustrated history of Indigenous activism and resistance in the Americas over the previous 500 years, from contact to present day. Eleven years later, author and artist Gord Hill has revised and expanded the book, which is now available in color for the first time.

The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book powerfully portrays flashpoints in history when Indigenous peoples have risen up and fought back against colonizers and other oppressors. Events depicted include the the Spanish conquest of the Aztec, Mayan and Inca empires; the 1680 Pueblo Revolt in New Mexico; the Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890; the resistance of the Great Plains peoples in the 19th century; and more recently, the Idle No More protests supporting Indigenous sovereignty and rights in 2012 and 2013, and the resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016.

With strong, plain language and evocative illustrations, this revised and expanded edition of The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book reveals the tenacity and perseverance of Indigenous peoples as they endured 500-plus years of genocide, massacre, torture, rape, displacement, and assimilation: a necessary antidote to conventional histories of the Americas.

The book includes a foreword by Pamela Palmater, a Mi'kmaq lawyer, professor, and political commentator.

American Indians and the Mass Media

American Indians and the Mass Media

$24.95
More Info

Mention "American Indian," and the first image that comes to most people's minds is likely to be a figment of the American mass media: A war-bonneted chief. The Land O' Lakes maiden. Most American Indians in the twenty-first century live in urban areas, so why do the mass media still rely on Indian imagery stuck in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? How can more accurate views of contemporary Indian cultures replace such stereotypes? These and similar questions ground the essays collected in American Indians and the Mass Media, which explores Native experience and the mainstream media's impact on American Indian histories, cultures, and communities.

Chronicling milestones in the relationship between Indians and the media, some of the chapters employ a historical perspective, and others focus on contemporary practices and new technologies. All foreground American Indian perspectives missing in other books on mass communication. The historical studies examine treatment of Indians in America's first newspaper, published in seventeenth-century Boston, and in early Cherokee newspapers; Life magazine's depictions of Indians, including the famous photograph of Ira Hayes raising the flag at Iwo Jima; and the syndicated feature stories of Elmo Scott Watson. Among the chapters on more contemporary issues, one discusses campaigns to change offensive place-names and sports team mascots, and another looks at recent movies such as Smoke Signals and television programs that are gradually overturning the "movie Indian" stereotypes of the twentieth century.

Particularly valuable are the essays highlighting authentic tribal voices in current and future media. Mark Trahant chronicles the formation of the Native American Journalists Association, perhaps the most important early Indian advocacy organization, which he helped found. As the contributions on new media point out, American Indians with access to a computer can tell their own stories--instantly to millions of people--making social networking and other Internet tools effective means for combating stereotypes.

Including discussion questions for each essay and an extensive bibliography, American Indians and the Mass Media is a unique educational resource.

An Indigenous Peoples' History

An Indigenous Peoples' History

$19.95
More Info
2020 American Indian Youth Literature Young Adult Honor Book

2020 Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People, selected by National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) and the Children's Book Council


2019 Best-Of Lists: Best YA Nonfiction of 2019 (Kirkus Reviews) - Best Nonfiction of 2019 (School Library Journal) - Best Books for Teens (New York Public Library) - Best Informational Books for Older Readers (Chicago Public Library)
Spanning more than 400 years, this classic bottom-up history examines the legacy of Indigenous peoples' resistance, resilience, and steadfast fight against imperialism.

Going beyond the story of America as a country "discovered" by a few brave men in the "New World," Indigenous human rights advocate Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz reveals the roles that settler colonialism and policies of American Indian genocide played in forming our national identity.

The original academic text is fully adapted by renowned curriculum experts Debbie Reese and Jean Mendoza, for middle-grade and young adult readers to include discussion topics, archival images, original maps, recommendations for further reading, and other materials to encourage students, teachers, and general readers to think critically about their own place in history.

Going beyond the story of America as a country “discovered” by a few brave men in the “New World,” Indigenous human rights advocate Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz reveals the roles that settler colonialism and policies of American Indian genocide played in forming our national identity.

The original academic text is fully adapted by renowned curriculum experts Debbie Reese and Jean Mendoza, for middle-grade and young adult readers to include discussion topics, archival images, original maps, recommendations for further reading, and other materials to encourage students, teachers, and general readers to think critically about their own place in history.

Anarcho-Indigenism

Anarcho-Indigenism

$19.95
More Info

"Anarchists have much to learn from Indigenous struggles for decolonization. [A] thought-provoking collection" Lesley J. Wood, Professor, York University, Toronto

"Vigorously affirming anarchism's plurality, the authors make a powerful case for the reconfiguration of anticolonial struggle" Ruth Kinna, Professor, Loughborough University

As early as the end of the nineteenth century, anarchists such as Peter Kropotkin and Élisée Reclus became interested in Indigenous peoples, many of whom they saw as societies without a state or private property, living a form of communism. Thinkers such as David Graeber and John Holloway have continued this tradition of engagement with the practices of Indigenous societies, while Indigenous activists coined the term 'anarcho-indigenism', in reference to a long history of (often imperfect) collaboration between anarchists and Indigenous activists, over land rights and environmental issues, including recent high profile anti-pipeline campaigns.

Anarcho-Indigenism is a dialogue between anarchism and Indigenous politics. In interviews, the contributors reveal what Indigenous thought and traditions and anarchism have in common, without denying the scars left by colonialism. They ultimately offer a vision of the world that combines anti-colonialism, feminism, ecology, anti-capitalism and anti-statism.

Francis Dupuis-Déri is a Professor of Political Science and a member of the Institut de Recherches et d'études Féministes at the Université du Québec à Montréal. He is the author of several books such as Who's Afraid of the Black Blocs?. Benjamin Pillet is a translator and community organizer, with a PhD in Political Thought from the Université du Québec à Montréal.

As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock

As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock

$17.00
More Info
The story of Native peoples' resistance to environmental injustice and land incursions, and a call for environmentalists to learn from the Indigenous community's rich history of activism

Through the unique lens of "Indigenized environmental justice," Indigenous researcher and activist Dina Gilio-Whitaker explores the fraught history of treaty violations, struggles for food and water security, and protection of sacred sites, while highlighting the important leadership of Indigenous women in this centuries-long struggle. As Long As Grass Grows gives readers an accessible history of Indigenous resistance to government and corporate incursions on their lands and offers new approaches to environmental justice activism and policy.

Throughout 2016, the Standing Rock protest put a national spotlight on Indigenous activists, but it also underscored how little Americans know about the longtime historical tensions between Native peoples and the mainstream environmental movement. Ultimately, she argues, modern environmentalists must look to the history of Indigenous resistance for wisdom and inspiration in our common fight for a just and sustainable future.

As Sacred to Us: Simon Pokagon's Birch Bark Stories in Their Contexts

As Sacred to Us: Simon Pokagon's Birch Bark Stories in Their Contexts

$24.95
More Info
Originally published in 1893 and 1901, Simon Pokagon's birch bark stories were printed on thinly peeled and elegantly bound birch bark. In this edition, these rare booklets are reprinted with new essays that set the stories in cultural, linguistic, historical, and even geological context. Experts in Native literary traditions, history, Algonquian languages, the Michigan landscape, and materials conservation illuminate the thousands of years of Indigenous knowledge that Pokagon elevated in his stories. This is an essential resource for teachers and scholars of Native literature, Neshnabé pasts and futures, Algonquian linguistics, and book history.
Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History

Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History

$19.95
More Info

The Indian history of the Great Lakes region of the United States and Canada, and particularly of the Ohio Valley, is so complex that it can be properly clarified only with the visual aid of maps. The Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History, in a sequence of thirty-three newly researched maps printed in as many as five colors, graphically displays the movement of Indian communities from 1640 to about 1871, when treaty making between Indian tribes and the United States government came to an end.

History was shaped in this part of North America by intertribal warfare, refugee movements, epidemics of European-introduced diseases, French and English wars and trade rivalry, white population advances, Indian resistance, Indian treaties deeding land to state and national governments, and imperfect arrangements for reservations, removal, and allotment of land. The changing pattern of Indian village locations as a result of all these factors is shown on the maps. Each map is highlighted by accompanying text, written as if the author were pointing out specific places on the map. Eighty-one illustrations convey a realistic impression of the land and its people.

Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future

Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future

$26.99
More Info

We find our way forward by going back.

The invented history of the Western world is crumbling fast, Anishinaabe writer Patty Krawec says, but we can still honor the bonds between us. Settlers dominated and divided, but Indigenous peoples won't just send them all "home."

Weaving her own story with the story of her ancestors and with the broader themes of creation, replacement, and disappearance, Krawec helps readers see settler colonialism through the eyes of an Indigenous writer. Settler colonialism tried to force us into one particular way of living, but the old ways of kinship can help us imagine a different future. Krawec asks, What would it look like to remember that we are all related? How might we become better relatives to the land, to one another, and to Indigenous movements for solidarity? Braiding together historical, scientific, and cultural analysis, Indigenous ways of knowing, and the vivid threads of communal memory, Krawec crafts a stunning, forceful call to "unforget" our history.

This remarkable sojourn through Native and settler history, myth, identity, and spirituality helps us retrace our steps and pick up what was lost along the way: chances to honor rather than violate treaties, to see the land as a relative rather than a resource, and to unravel the history we have been taught.

Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian's Journey Home

Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian's Journey Home

$28.00
More Info
A Millions Most Anticipated Book of 2024"I'm in awe of Chris La Tray's storytelling. Becoming Little Shell creates a multilayered narrative from threads of personal, family, community, tribal, and national histories."--Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass
"I'm committed to uncovering the culture of my people. I'm com-mitted to learning as much of the language as I can. I've always loved this land, and I've always loved Indian people. The more I dig into it, the more I interact with my Indian relatives, the more it blooms in my heart. The more it blooms in my spirit."Growing up in Montana, Chris La Tray always identified as Indian. Despite the fact that his father fiercely denied any connection, he found Indigenous people alluring, often recalling his grandmother's consistent mention of their Chippewa heritage.When La Tray attended his grandfather's funeral as a young man, he finally found himself surrounded by relatives who obviously were Indigenous. "Who were they?" he wondered, and "Why was I never allowed to know them?" Combining diligent research and compelling conversations with authors, activists, elders, and historians, La Tray embarks on a journey into his family's past, discovering along the way a larger story of the complicated history of Indigenous communities--as well as the devastating effects of colonialism that continue to ripple through surviving generations. And as he comes to embrace his full identity, he eventually seeks enrollment with the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians, joining their 158-year-long struggle for federal recognition. Both personal and historical, Becoming Little Shell is a testament to the power of storytelling, to family and legacy, and to finding home. Infused with candor, heart, wisdom, and an abiding love for a place and a people, Chris La Tray's remarkable journey is both revelatory and redemptive.